Sultana Reports Best Month of May Ever

Thanks to an expansion of its paddling programs and the continuing popularity of its educational field-trips on the schooner SULTANA, Sultana Projects recorded its most productive month ever in May, providing on-the-water educational programs for 1,400 students and teachers from 12 Maryland counties and the District of Columbia. Sultana Projects worked with an average of 60 students a day in May, with each student spending approximately five hours on the water.

“Our staff was all over the Chesapeake this month,” said Sultana Vice President Chris Cerino. “We worked with students in our core counties of Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot, but also hosted programs as far away as St. Mary’s, Harve de Grace, Annapolis, the Patuxent River, and the Nanticoke River.”

Thanks to the Chesapeake Watershed Initiative (CWI), an ongoing partnership between Sultana, NOAA, the National Geographic Society, and the Maryland Geographic Alliance, many of the teachers bringing their students to a Sultana program in May were participating in their second or even third program with Sultana this school year. Commented Cerino, “CWI has made it possible for us to work with many of our teachers in the winter months, giving them strategies, training, and equipment that we have put to good use with their students in the field this spring.”

Incredibly, many of the students that sailed or paddled with Sultana Projects in May were getting out on the water for the very first time. In the words of one teacher who took her class aboard Sultana while the schooner was docked on the Severn River, “My students thoroughly enjoyed themselves. For most of them, it was not only their first time on a boat, but also the first time they have ever been to Annapolis. I cannot thank you and your crew enough for allowing them to experience something completely new and learn quite a bit in the process. It is a day many of them won’t soon forget.”